Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 October 31

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 31

Arabic min-hu - from him, his, of his?

Reading some Christian-Muslim discussion I stumbled upon the sura 4:171, where it's said about Jesus in Arabic وَرُوحٌ مِنْهُ wa-rūḥun min-hu. Some Muslims say that the translation of min-hu as "his" is utterly wrong and it should be always "from him", though I think that it is possible to interpret this as "of his" or simply "his". Min here is more like English of (e.g. a friend of his) or French de or à (e.g. un ami à lui, à lui is rather "his" than over-literal "to him"). But I can not point directly to a particular paragraph from a grammar, where this role of the preposition min would be explained.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:51, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't know if this will help but a little French grammar of Arabic ("Arabe Grammaire Active" by Michel Neyreneuf and Ghalib Al-Hakkak, 1996) gives as an example of use of the preposition من the following: أنا منكم "I'm one of you" (in French "Je suis des vôtres"). This is the closest I could get given the resources available to me. Contact Basemetal here 07:47, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

"min" can be a "partitive genitive", if you're referring to one from a set. For example, "madina min mudun" means literally "a city from the cities" but idiomatically means "one of the cities". In this case, normally you'd expect it to say "wa-rūḥun-hu" for "and his spirit", and "wa-rūḥun min-hu" would mean "and a spirit from him", but it's not clear, and it could mean either. I doubt this question can be solved by an appeal to a grammar book, since this has caused doctrinal disputes among Muslims and between Muslims and Christians for well over 1000 years, and is exactly the sort of ambiguous piece of grammar that caused the same doctrinal disputes among Christians for centuries before that. See Islamic view of the Trinity for a very short explanation. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:07, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

"wa-rūḥun-hu"? rūḥ would be "determined" in this construction, so no tanwiin as far as I know: "wa-rūḥu-hu". Contact Basemetal here 18:05, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Probably, this was the reason for min-hu.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 05:33, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

The question was rather linguistic than theological. The claim was that the famous Russian Arabist Ignaty Krachkovsky translated this word wrong as "his" (Rus. его). But I'm sure he knew what he was doing, the great Arabist knew Arabic well and had not to follow settled Islamic dogmas while translating. If it could be used as an argument for the Trinity and that bothers Islamic apologists, so it is a problem of theirs, not of Krachkovsky.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 14:03, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

But it could also be used as an argument against the Trinity, which bothers other people. It can bother everyone equally! Linguistically it could go either way. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:33, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Does American English have triphthongs?

According to Wiktionary, all of the following words are triphthongs: riot (as opposed to "right"), crayon (as opposed to "crane"), royal (as opposed to "roil"), rowel (as opposed to "role"), dowel, trowel (as opposed to "now"). However, somebody claims that American English (as opposed to British English) doesn't have triphthongs, and that all of the examples mentioned above are polysyllabic. I'm eager to get your opinion. HOOTmag (talk) 18:10, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I may be mistaken, but I would consider all of those words in American English to be polysyllabic. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:14, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Robert; those are poor examples. In most dialects crayons, for example, are either disyllabic /'krej-ɔns/ or reduced to "crans" or "crowns". Much better examples of monosyllabic triphthongs would be the words why, wow, way, we, whoa, w(h)ooh, and ye, yay, yo, and you/yew. μηδείς (talk) 18:31, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Correct (btw, I deleted the wrong example "crayon"), and now I see that also wiktionary indicates all of these examples as disyllabic. However, I regard "we" (pronounced [wi] ) and "ye" (pronounced [ji] ) as monophthongs, and I regard the rest of your examples as diphthongs rather than as triphthongs. Let's take "why": it's pronounced [waɪ̯] (rather than [ʊa̯ɪ̯] ), isn't it? HOOTmag (talk) 18:56, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Okay, ya got me. If you want to talk phonemes, we and ye are diphthongs. If you want to talk SAE and RP, they are triphthongs phonetically. When I took phonetics at Cornell four decades ago, why was treated as /waj/, phonemically. WP tends to use British transcriptions. My problem with that is that one ends up phonetically overdescribing items that should be treated merely phonemically. μηδείς (talk) 23:35, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

No, it could not be that. Phonetically the last element is not as strong as the approximant [j], phonemically the last two sounds are one syllabic unit and not two ones that could be put together or split apart (vowel /a/ + approximant /j/). American "transcription" has been always very rough and broad (they even can use things like /y/ for IPA /j/ or /j/ for IPA /dʒ/), phonetics is not a strong side of American linguistics.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:28, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I'll maintain my stance. Yes, Americanists often use symbols such as y and č for /j/ and /t͡ʃ/. But we are not ignorant of European usage, and indeed we were first taught the "correct" way, that "j" and "y" were the glide and the rounded vowel, then advised that the tradition with those dealing with indigenous American traditions were wrong. In any case, your are equivocating by not distinguishing between /waj/, which is indeed the proper phonemic description of "why" (ignoring those who distinguish /ʍ/ for the moment, and a narrow phonetic description like [ʊɒɪ] or what have you. I assume you are certainly not going to make the claim that the "w" of way and the "oo" of book are the same phonemes. μηδείς (talk) 01:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Equally I will stand at my point. I'm not trying to undermine American linguistics, but either they taught you wrong then back, or you remembered wrong. I've already seen before such Americanist transcription like /way/ or /waj/ (in the ANAE particularly), but it would imply that in "why" there is a syllabic /a/ and a consonantal /j/, that is a closed CVC syllabic structure. But it is not that in English. It is an open CV with the V being a diphthong (/aɪ/ in this case). I'm not inventing anything just retelling the well-established analysis of the English phonology (I may cite any John Wells's or Peter Roach's works, for example). You can check it yourself with any (modern) book on English phonology and phonetics. Even old books like by Daniel Jones would work well. And in any description I never saw [ʊɒɪ] or anything alike you claim to exist. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:26, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Diphthongs and triphthongs have two meanings: either they are just any two/three sounds put together, or more often they are defined in linguistics as single independent elements that could not be split according to the phonology of a definite language. Diphthongs and triphthongs are usually put together with long vowels because the former are as long as the latter. In English (as well as Australian etc.) English there are two true triphthongs which developed from the loss of the rhotic consonant: /aɪə/ (fire) and /aʊə/ (hour). Bearing in mind rhoticity in American (and other rhotic) English, these would be /aɪr/ and /aʊr/, no triphthongs. In the cases where such combinations are not developed from the loss of the rhotic consonant (you have listed some examples) in both the varieties (rhotic or non-rhotic) they might be treated as triphthongs. But it would just complicate the system. So linguists disagree on that matter but it seems that most of them deny the status of these vowel combinations as independent elements of the phonetic system of English. See John Wells.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:21, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Is "beauty" not a triphtong in all varieties of English? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:59, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Didn't you mean trigraphs?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 07:40, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

No, I mean triphtong, that it is a trigraph is not actually relevant to this discussion, which is about speech, not writing. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:09, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Beauty is pronounced /ˈbjuːti/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]}

Again, that is simply wrong. American has no /u:/ phoneme, and I doubt I have missed it in RCP. It is simply the /u/ phoneme, which in beauty is phonetically ['bjuwtij] by American tradition. I call shennanigans on the claim that "hour" has one syllable. It has no fewer syllables than "flower". μηδείς (talk) 01:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Unless you speak a dialect where "hour" "our" and "are" are homophones. --Jayron32 17:53, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that occurred to me after I signed off. "Hour" and "are" do not rhyme in NYC or the Delaware Valley but our may rhyme with "hour" or "are" in free variation. μηδείς (talk) 23:40, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

In both the American south and Midwest, at least, "our" is often pronounced like "are". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:05, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Punctuation after punctuation?!

Saw an editor make a change that didn't seem intuitive to me, but since I'm frequently wrong, I figured I'd run it past y'all. If a title contains a punctuation mark, how do we end a sentence?

The theme song for the movie is What's New, Scooby-Doo?.

Note the period after the question mark. Or:

The theme song for the movie is What's New, Scooby-Doo?

Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:13, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

The second one is correct, although the sentence could be recast. See MOS:CONSECUTIVE. Deor (talk) 21:43, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thank you, Deor Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:49, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Wrong format. The theme song for the movie is "What's New, Scooby-Doo?"
Sleigh (talk) 06:29, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh yeah, that's a good point as well, Sleigh. Totally overlooked the quotes vs. itals matter. Thanks for that. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't that sentence require a full stop after the close quote? It would in my world. (But then, I am not of this earth.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:19, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Not in American usage; a sentence can be considered ended with a period, question, or exclamation mark followed by closed quotes, with no period needed outside the final quote marks. Stu's "hate" example below shows that the ? and the ! can be used after a stop within quotes in certain circumstances, although this is often avoided in print be rewording or use of indirect speech, and the space between !" and ? in his example is considered mis-set. μηδείς (talk) 02:06, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I sometimes use punctuation after punctuation in quotes:

• Did he really yell "I hate you !" ?

StuRat (talk) 16:30, 2 November 2015 (UTC)